“You’re not keeping one for a necklace.”
After we are finished—or at least at “good enough”—we bag everything; then we shower.
It’s well after midnight when I help him carry the body into the yard, where we split up. I go above to find the car while he slides the body down the hill, through the trees and undergrowth. I find the car by clicking her proximity key until the headlights flash.
As I activate the ignition and gaze at the dark road, a surge of panic rushes through me. I want to drive. I want to keep driving. I want to leave all this behind. A car like this could drive me to another world.
But I force myself to focus, to see this as a series of obstacles. Release the parking brake. Achievement unlocked.
Therapists say to take it one day at a time; it’s the same with dumping a body. If you separate it into pieces, it’s totally manageable. You can achieve anything. You can achieve the unthinkable.
Step one.
I move slowly down the hill, through the twisted streets. I get lost a couple times before I find the valley below the glass house, where the yard ends at an uneven fence. Michael’s head pokes over the top.
“I’m gonna have to throw her over.” His eyes flash in the dark and he ducks down.
Step two.
Her hand appears first, reaching as if asking me to help pull her over. She is stiff and loose at the same time, weighed down with death. And I try to manage all the pieces of her as they move in ways you wouldn’t expect, in ways no living thing does.
“You’re scratching her up,” he says. I try to respond, but my voice is muffled by her coat, her black ski coat, the one that brushed against me on the street.
I lose my balance. She falls on top of me. She reeks of mulch and leaves with just a hint of expensive perfume. My heart races. For a second, for a minute, it’s like she is embracing me and then it’s like she is trying to kill me.
I can’t move. I deserve to die.
Michael’s heavy boots land on my side of the fence. “What are you doing?” He helps me out from under her.
“This doesn’t feel real.” I shake my head.
“No real thing does.” He lights a cigarette, then drags her toward the open trunk.
Step three.
DEMI
Michael sits in the front seat. He inhales so deeply from the foil that he frizzles the heroin. The burned smell makes me gag.
We drive in silence toward the camp.
“Someone is going to be awake,” I say. Michael sits back, starting to nod out. “Someone is going to see us.”
“No one sees us.” His eyelids are heavy. His lower lip hangs, a drop of spit at its center. “We don’t even see ourselves.” His head falls back, bounces lightly on the seat, and it is clear I am going to do this the same way I do everything, have done everything ever: alone.
I park the car at the dead end below the freeway off-ramp. I grip the steering wheel and order myself to be calm.
The camp stretches under the freeway, streams loosely across the sidewalk. You forgot to put your things away; now someone lives in them. I could go back to my tent. I could change my clothes; I could slip back in and no one would ever notice.
And there’s the rub: No one would notice. I think of the people smiling on the street in the village. I think of Graham. God. You’re gorgeous. Like he was seeing himself in my eyes.
It’s pathetic. It’s probably evil. But I want to be seen. I want to be somebody. I want to be rich. I want to be the reason.
I shut off the engine.
It feels like I haven’t been here in years. It’s been one day. And I remind myself, in another day, in another day and another day, I will hardly even remember this night.
The guesthouse is a magic box, a place that will transport me to another life. And I won’t remember what it feels like to sleep on cardboard, won’t know the smell of blood and urine, won’t taste fear on my tongue first thing every morning or lie back dreaming of sleep. I will be someone else. All I have to do is set my old self on fire.
The car door dings as I open it.
Michael smacks his lips. “Don’t forget the heater.” He means the heater in his tent, the one I’m supposed to use to burn the body.
Demi must weigh over a hundred pounds, but it’s suddenly easy to drag her. Adrenaline is coursing through me. I have to stop myself from going too fast, from drawing attention. And I think of my dad, how he’d walk into grocery stores and walk out with food, how he’d piss in the street with a cop watching or pinch cocaine at a park, and I think, They won’t see you unless you want them to see you. I am the architect of reality. I am the reason.
Cars drive past, a pedestrian staggers by, but lucky for me, everyone averts their eyes at a tent city, afraid of being asked for something they can afford to lose. It works because I am invisible. We are all invisible on this side of the line.
But from the camp, on the curb, a single set of eyes watches me. A man nods. He reminds me of myself because he says nothing. We all say nothing. It’s a pact. We all say nothing on this side of the line.
My tent is waiting for me, calling me home, door still unzipped, and I duck down and drag the body under the open flap. I leave my backpack outside, set away so it doesn’t catch fire. My tent is set in a crevice away from the others, so it will burn safely, alone.
I find the heater in Michael’s loftier tent. I don’t know how to turn it on, let alone how to make it catch fire, but I find a bottle of vodka and I take it back to my tent and pour it over everything. Then I hesitate, heart racing, trying to pound its way free of my chest.
I look at her face one last time, because I think I should. I force myself to do it. Mourn her, I think. But I don’t know her and I never will. So instead, I thank her.
I step outside. The cold air brushes my cheeks.
I light her on fire.
DEMI
I drive through the hills, getting lost on purpose. Michael is asleep in the front seat, unburdened, while I climb up and up into the hills, adrenaline pumping, every shadow a cop chasing me, every light a chance to be seen.
I end up outside a park cradled in the hills, looking out over the Westside, all the way to the ocean. Below me, a reservoir gleams.
I never knew there was a lake here. All my life and I never went this high. I watch it for a while through the chain-link fence. Then I exit the car with a bag of hands and feet and teeth.
I am drenched in sweat as I walk along the asphalt road that circles the lake. I feel like I have never felt, and there is something awesome in that. I can feel my old self dying, like the fire I set was inside me, but I am still carrying my body. And then, blinking through the trees with the sun, is another existence, the person I am becoming: Demi on a morning walk in the chilling air.
I scale the fence. It’s easy. Everything is easy now.
I startle when I nearly run into seven deer. They all look at me, ears spread wide. I tell myself it’s a good omen, even though I stopped telling myself those kinds of stories.
I walk until I reach the water; then I weigh the bag down with rocks. I wade out into the lake, alone in the middle of this monstrous city. There are bigger rocks beneath my feet and I dive down and lift them. I bury her parts underneath.
When I crest the surface, I gasp for breath. The lake glitters all around me, beautiful, laughing. It’s laughing at me for being the last ugly thing in a beautiful world.
I swim to the shore. I watch the sun flush through the valley, bringing it to light. I see blood spattered in the dirt and don’t know if it’s hers or mine. I use her shoe to cover it.
The sun rises. I try to say a prayer but all I can manage is You made this world. What did you expect?
* * *